We're expensive, but worth it

Think Social Media is free? Think again. This infographic shows the real cost of a Social Media campaign. $210,000 ain't little, but the study shows that it's worth it. Two examples:

A MacDonalds Facebook fan will spend twice as much as a non-Facebook fan.

And Facebook Fans are 41% more likely to recommend a product than non-fans.

Newt and whose army?

When Newt Gingrich, the controversial US politican, claimed he is the top dog because he has more followers on Twitter than his opponents, people started paying attention. Gawker soon found an ex-staffer who claimed Gingrich paid agencies to set up fake followers.

We set the RAAK bots to the task and sampled 26,000 or so of his followers, to see what we could find.

Not all followers are the same

On that note, Socialflow has produced another piece of fascinating analysis. They compared the New York Times', Fox News', The Economist's and Al Jazeera's Twitter audiences. The result? Al Jazeera has the highest Retweet rate. But The Economist and Fox have a much higher rate of people actually clicking on the links per Tweet.

Why could this be? Perhaps people like to be seen sharing Al Jazeera and New York Times content, but it's the Economist's audience that REALLY wants to read The Economist.

What's really going on on your Facebook Page

As we're getting to understand more about Facebook's Edgerank system – the algorithm that decides what posts to show to what users – the Facebook analytic of choice is shifting away from simply the number of Likes you get. Facebook Insights already gives you good stats on engagement level, but this week a tool called Pagelever has been getting a lot of plaudits.

We haven't used it yet, but the initial comments on this not-so-critical article appear to be positive. The tool seems to allow you to dig a lot deeper than Insights, quite like Google Analytics. You can for example see who Unliked your Page at what point. Although we have to add that all Pagelever data are based on the Facebook Insights API, so they're not generating any new data, 'just' doing more with it.

Foursquare opens up Business Pages

This week Foursquare opened up their Business Pages to anyone. Which means that as a venue you can now communicate more easily with your audience. And, possibly more interesting, as a brand you can create location-based content (i.e. tips, check-ins,…) and send those to your followers. Previously you had to be manually approved by Foursquare for a Business Page.

More importantly from a social point of view, they also rolled out no less than 3 tools that make it easier to verify the identity of their potential tenants, including Twitter account verification and a Photobooth. Quite impressive.

How to become a YouTube star

In their attempt to help the YouTube community create more high-quality content, the service has launched The Creator Playbook. It's a document (a document! with pages!! 70 of them!!!) with tips on creation, optimisation and distribution with the aim to cut down the amount of cute kitten videos by 35% by the end of 2011. There's only one made-up fact in that last sentence.

Also important, Klout is now including YouTube activity as a parameter to measure your social media influence.

When in Ibiza, check-in

Brilliant idea from this hotel in Ibiza: they've created an RFID-enabled wristband that is linked to a person's Facebook profile. So rather than carry a mobile phone around, guests can check-in, tag photos, Like and generally make their Facebook friends jealous at RFID points set up around the resort.

The most Liked chocolate in the world

There was an interesting article in Brand Republic this week about the Social Media success of Skittles. About two years ago, when the confectionary brand decided to put Social Media at the core of what they do, they took a big risk. And got some stick for it. But it's been paying off and has resulted in a Facebook with almost 19 million Fans.

How? Over the years, they've created a fun, off-the-wall Facebook presence. Both with constant bits of small content as well as big campaign-style creative Impact Projects (like the very funny Blue Skittles character that gets mentioned in the article), which build on that Social Media equity.

Creative Of The Week – James Bridle

There are people who use maps as a tool to get them from A to B. There are people who look at maps and start dreaming of far-away destinations. And there's James Bridle, who sees them as a conceptual opportunity. With his Rorschmap project he reframes the map and creates what he calls 'cartographic navelgazing'.

The theory is here; but to glare in awe at some beautiful patterns, just go here.